


Adventures in Superpowered Dating

by Bekkoni



Series: The Platonic Adventures of Bruce and Lois [1]
Category: DCU, DCU Animated, Justice League, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Drunkenness, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 09:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bekkoni/pseuds/Bekkoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lois breaks up with Clark, Bruce takes it upon himself to fix things. Too bad he doesn't realize what he's getting himself into. Includes Bruce on a couch, Sex and the City, and too much wine. BMWW, SMLL.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Superpowered Dating

Contrary to popular belief, Batman was not infallible.  In fact, he sometimes did things he downright regretted, or that got him into situations he did not want to be in.

Like giving Clark his cellphone number. _That_ had been a mistake. Because here was finishing up his monitor duty shift, and the Kryptonian had texted him a little sad-face emoticon with no accompanying explanation. Bruce sighed, tried for a good ten minutes to stifle his curiosity, then finally gave up and traced the text to Clark’s room on the Watchtower. He took a deep breath and switched off the monitor bay computer.

 ****#**** 

Clark was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. When Bruce walked in he got a wide-eyed look not unlike that of a kicked puppy.

“I’m not going to play Twenty Questions here,” Bruce said. “You have thirty seconds to get on with it.”

 Clark stared at him for a good quarter of his allotted time, and then blurted out, “Lois broke up with me!”

Bruce paused, because he was pretty sure he had just misheard, since if he’d _actually_ heard what he _thought_ he’d heard then that signaled a pretty deep explosion in the natural order of things. “What?”

 “She dumped me,” Clark repeated, with a little moan and a dramatic toss of his arm across his face.

 “Are you sure you didn’t just mistake her yelling at you for not getting a story for ‘breaking up’ again?” Bruce asked, because being through _that_ drama once was enough, thank you. “Remember, you’re allowed to fight in a relationship.”

 “She said _I’m done, Clark_.”

 Bruce blinked, and tried to imagine a world where Clark wasn’t either chasing after Lois or dating her, and couldn’t. The Clark/Lois relationship was as consistent as the sunrise. “What on earth did you do?”

 “I don’t know.” Clark sat up, eyes on the carpet like he was just a little too proud to let them water. “I don’t know what I did. And she won’t pick up the phone. Jesus, Bruce, what am I going to do?” 

****#****

Bruce wasn’t sure what Clark was going to do, but he knew what _he_ was going to do. So at eight that night he bypassed the buzzer on Lois’s apartment building and knocked on her door.

 She opened with a bit of annoyance. “Bruce?”

 He stepped inside before she invited him to do so. “Why did you break up with Clark? He’s practically at the point of listening to Alanis Morissette while writing crappy love poems to you.”

 Lois sighed. “Did he send you over here?”

 “I came on my own.” Bruce watched as she went to the kitchen and started rummaging around in a drawer. “You can’t just break up with him and not tell him what he did. I can’t have a depressed Superman to wrangle while we’re trying to fight Luthor or the Parasite or whoever.”

 “I’m glad to hear you care so deeply about my relationship.” Lois was yanking the cork out of a wine bottle. She plunked two glasses down on the coffee table in in front of the couch. “If you’re going to make me play relationship counselor with you, you’re having some of this too.”

“I don’t—” he began.

 “My god,” she snapped, and sloshed wine into both glasses. “I just broke up with my superpowered boyfriend of eight years, who I practically _swooned_ over when we first met. Humor me and drink.”

 He took a glass and sat down, a little awkwardly, on the opposite end of the couch from her. She kicked off her high heels and put her stockinged feet up on the table. Bruce sipped the wine because this all had _seemed_ like a good idea, but now he wasn’t so sure. “What’s going on, Lois?”

 “I don’t know—I’m just sick of it.” She sighed again into her glass. “I—I love Clark. Don’t get me wrong. I do. But I just want to strangle him! As Superman he’s so self-assured and grand, and then Clark comes home and trips over his own two feet.”

 “You get what it says on the tin,” Bruce replied, “Kansas farmboy, alien flavor.”

 “His idea of romanticism is a couple of cans of Coke and sitcom reruns.” Lois tucked her feet under her and refilled her glass. “You know—when he tells me about all your battle, he reenacts them with _BIFF BAM POW_ sound effects? I feel like buying him a pile of action figures for Christmas.”

 Bruce chuckled at that. “Hey, you could’ve had me.”

 She laughed perhaps a little harder than he would’ve liked. “So my choices are between the guy who calls his mom every other day and the guy with enough emotional distance to stretch to Jupiter? Great.”

 Bruce decided that, given the circumstances, he would let that one go. Instead he downed half the glass of wine. He was feeling more and more that this had been not his greatest of ideas. “That doesn’t mean you have to break up with him. I’m sure you could—ah…” he reached for his repertoire of relationship advice, and realized that given that all of his girlfriends were either on not-quite-the-right side of the law or had about two brain cells or could crush bones with their pinkies, he really wasn’t the best source of counsel.

 “—talk it out!” he finished cheerfully, because that was what he’d heard when he’d accidentally seen the last ten minutes of _Good Morning America_ once. Anyway, it wasn’t like any sort of harm could come from that advice. “Surely if you told him how you feel, he’d try to put a little more Superman into the Clark?”

 “Last week he said we should go out for a _romantic_ meal, and so we went to a Coney island.” She groaned, drained her glass, and refilled it. “If he scaled it up, maybe we’d finally get to go to a restaurant where the napkins come wrapped around the silverware instead of out of a dispenser at the table.”

 “He does his best,” Bruce said. “At least he tries.”

 Lois snorted. “Yes, but is his best really all that great?”

 Bruce looked at her and set his glass on the table. “My girlfriend is a superpowered Amazonian princess ambassador. I haven’t even _seen_ her for two weeks because she’s trying to keep the Koreas from killing each other. The last time we tried to get coffee she drank one sip and then Germany started threatening to sink the euro again. And _I’m_ supposed to be the flighty one.”

 Lois groaned. “Is there a good way to have a relationship with superpowers? Or is that just impossible? _You_ signed up for this—I just inherited an alien coworker-come-boyfriend. If you can’t have a regular relationship when you’re both in costume what hope do I have?”

 “Regular might be asking for too much,” he admitted.

 “So your girlfriend is Miss I’ll-Fix-the-World but you can’t get an action.” Lois, by this point, had consumed a surprising amount of alcohol. “And I’m dating an eight-year-old. I guess I should feel lucky I have a sex life, comparatively. Ya know, in between visits to Kansas and supervillain battles.”

 “If you don’t mind,” Bruce said, “I’d really rather not hear very many details about your and Clark’s sex life.”

 Lois shrugged like she didn’t give a damn one way or the other. Somehow the bottle of wine was almost two-thirds empty and he was pretty sure that he hadn’t had all that much. Why was it that whenever he had to deal with one of Kent’s friends/family things got out of hand?

 “You know what we need?” Lois sounded a little slurred, and he tried to figure out a way to politely break for the door. “A superhero’s significant other union.”

 “Like a dating Bill of Rights?” Bruce asked. He was beginning to prefer the idiot socialites that frequented Gotham’s soirees—at least when those girls got drunk they just took off their clothes or passed out. “ _The undersigned will arrange a romantic dinner at least twice a month, including an appetizer course._ ”

 Lois giggled and snuggled up to him on the couch. Bruce went rigid and tried to extradite himself from the situation, but he was trapped between her and the arm of the couch, and she was situated against him in such away that his left leg was starting to fall asleep. “Lois. I really think that you ought to go to bed now. And call Clark, in the morning. But I’m leaving.”

 She gave him a look like he was a fly. “What do you think I’m doing, trying to get your pants off? Been there, done that, not about to go back for seconds.” She picked up the remote from the coffee table and turned on the TV, apparently to some channel that she watched often enough to be able to hit the numbers without looking and while drunk.

“I really should go,” he repeated, as four women with extremely shiny hair pranced across the screen.

“I have red wine, I just broke up with my boyfriend though probably not permanently, and I’m an upwardly-mobile city woman.” Lois continued to look at him as if this were supposed to mean something. “You’re my stand-in girlfriend. The only thing you’d be getting up for is if you want to grab the carton of ice cream out of the freezer.”

He considered calling Clark, but what the hell would he say? _Your possibly-ex girlfriend is trying to feminize me with Sex in the City because she’s a yuppie?_ And that would necessitate explaining what exactly he was doing here in the first place, which was looking increasingly like a story best left forgotten.

 “Drink more,” she ordered, and he obliged because that was a good way to kill time.

 ****#****

 He blinked, and suddenly there was a different bottle on the table and this one was almost gone, too. Sarah Jessica Parker was giggling on screen over an obviously overpriced lunch.

 “She’s really not that great in real life. Has the personality of a horse, too.” Where the hell had that come from?

 Lois’s eyebrows shot up. “You _dated_ her? For reals?”

 “I wouldn’t say ‘dated’...” Bruce let her fill in the rest.

Lois bounced up to sitting and slugged him in the arm. “God, Bruce, you’re a slut. You know that, right? One night stands with starlets you compare to livestock and semi-long term relationships with various criminals and terrorists. I bet you need a spreadsheet to track your dating history.”

 “Diana isn’t a starlet or a criminal or a terrorist.” Despite himself, he prickled.

 “Well, that must be a first for you.” Lois snorted and her head lolled against his shoulder. On the screen, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big were having a dinner date that was devolving into uncomfortable awkwardness. “In fact, I don’t even think that I’ve ever seen Diana in a single piece of leather clothing. Strange, eh?”

 “Shut up,” he muttered. Apparently read wine reduced his bank of available comebacks, whereas Lois just got more sarcastic. And she wondered why Clark never took her anywhere nice.

 “Its not my fault your girlfriends have a trend.” Lois paused for a moment at what was evidently A Good Part. “And Clark told me about that time he had to rescue you from Talia.”

 “What?” Bruce jumped, enough that she scowled at him, but the look was quickly replaced with a giggle.

 “He said you were handcuffed to a hotel bed?” She was laughing so hard that she had to breathe between every other word. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “And she took your cellphone? Though he _did_ fail to mention what state of dress you were in.”

 He resisted the urge to cross his arms like a petulant child. “Firstly, he shouldn’t have told you that, and secondly, he didn’t _rescue_ me from her.”

 Lois stopped laughing and looked him straight in the eye. “Because she was already gone?”

 “ _Shut up_.”

 She dissolved into tears. “Oh my god! You’re _the goddamn Batman_! You somehow block out a Martian telepath from your brain! And all it takes to get you naked and chained to a bedframe is the idea of sex with an ecoterrorist’s daughter?”

 Bruce scowled and tried to wriggle away from her for what had to be the fiftieth time that night. But by now he was kind of tipsy too so all he ended up accomplishing was getting himself pinned under her arm. “There was more to it than that. Lots more. Clark should no better than to make up a story, Mr. Journalist that he is.”

 “Clark made nothing up, I’m extrapolating from the obvious circumstances.”

 He looked at her. “How can you say ext—…extrab—…that word when you’ve had twice as much wine as me.”

 Lois smiled. “Honey, if you knew how many times Lex Luthor has tried to get me drunk to keep me from remembering to quote him, you’d understand my tolerance level.”

 Bruce poked her to see if that got her off of him. “I come from a long line of alcoholic aristocrats. I can drink you under the table.”

 

 ~Two Hours Later~

Clark decided that flowers would help. It was late on a Saturday night, surely Lois would still be up and he could apologize. For what, he still wasn’t quite sure, but he could figure that out later.

 He did not expect to find the door unlocked, and his best friend half-sprawled on his girlfriend’s couch with said girlfriend practically _curled_ on his lap.

 “Hey, Clark,” Bruce said, with a little bit of a wave.

 Clark set the flowers on the kitchen table, took a very, very deep breath, and then looked back to make sure that his eyes hadn’t been deceiving him.  Nope, Bruce was still there, with Lois still on top of him.

 “Bruce,” he said, trying not to crush the back of Lois’s kitchen chair under his hand. “What is going on?”

 Lois giggled and wrapped her arm around Bruce’s neck. “We were just chatting.”

 Clark walked up to Bruce and pointed at the door. “Out.”

 “Get your girlfriend off of me,” Bruce replied, but Lois sighed and slipped over to the other side of the couch. Bruce stood up, promptly stumbled against the coffee table. Clark resisted the urge to give him a hand, and watched him pick himself up and walk out.

 

 ~Seven Hours Later~

 Bruce was trying to focus on the monitor. It was very, very difficult. Apparently he’d forgotten what a hangover actually felt like, because he didn’t recall being so unable to comprehend math back in his less self-controlled teenage years. Or maybe he was just getting old. Neither prospect was a good one. He gave up on trying to figure out what on earth Wally had broken in the Javelin this time and instead switched on the cable.

 “Coffee?”

 He turned to see Clark holding two mugs, and slipped in front of the TV screen. “Yes. Please. I take it you’re no longer upset?”

 “No, Lois and I talked.” Clark sighed and sat down next to him. “I know you were trying to help. Although I would appreciate if next time your help didn’t include my girlfriend in your lap.”

 “I didn’t start that,” Bruce said, winced at the loudness of his own voice, and sipped the coffee. Sweet, hot coffee. “I think Lois is feistier than you give her credit for. And also, possibly, in need of a bit more attention.”

 “Yes, so I discovered.” Clark looked actually a bit disappointed in himself. “I guess I didn’t really think much. You get with a person and then you start taking them for granted, I suppose.”

 Bruce kept quiet and sipped his coffee, because this was the part where Clark just talked to himself for a while.

 “But we didn’t break up!” he said, cheerfully. “But what’s this about a 'metahuman significant other' lobby?”

 “Oh,” Bruce said, “we were just complaining about how annoying it is to date people with superpowers.”

 “Lovely.” Clark chuckled to himself. “Somehow I thought you’d see that as a plus.”

 “It is at times,” Bruce admitted. “But I get a little sick of my girlfriend being gone to save the world all the time. In the beginning, it was her complaining about me being unavailable.”

 “Maybe you deserve a little payback.” Clark drained half his coffee (damned superspeed—Lois probably never got to have a nice breakfast) and peered over Bruce’s shoulder. “What are you watching?”

 Bruce jabbed the monitor’s power switch with his elbow. “Nothing.”

 “Really?” Clark gave him one of those long, disbelieving stares. “When has ‘nothing’ ever stopped a line of questioning, ever? Aren’t you supposed to be Mr. Interrogation?”

 Bruce crossed his arms. “I’m hungover! Which is _your_ fault, indirectly. I am not at my most eloquent. Can we just move on?”

 Clark blurred past him, moving at only around a tenth of his top speed, but still way too fast for Bruce to stop him, and turned the monitor back on. He blinked, both eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline, and then his jaw went slack. “You are _not_.”

 Bruce squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “I just had to see how it ended, all right?”

 He did not like the way that Clark put his hand over his mouth to try and hide a snicker. Even more so, he didn’t like that Clark failed at the ‘hiding it’ part. “Should I let Lois know that she’s got a partner now for _Sex in the City_ night? I guess I don’t mind last night so much if it’s a Girls Night In thing. That’s hardly threatening.”

 “Hey, I got her to take you back, didn’t I?” Bruce put enough of a bite in it to shut Clark up. “And anyway, it wouldn’t be that popular a show if there wasn’t something good about it.”

 “Thank you,” Clark said, seriously, after another sip of his coffee, “for talking to Lois. I mean it, it helped a lot.”

 “You’re welcome.” Bruce settled back against his chair and finished off his coffee. “Just promise me you’re never going to get me involved in your romantic troubles again.”

 “Promise,” Clark said. “Though I think you did because you care, loathe as you are to admit it. So, what episode of this are you on?”

 Bruce narrowed his eyes. “You can’t mock me for this if you watch it too.”

 Clark tapped his ear. “I have superhearing. I can’t _help_ but to follow it when I’m in the same apartment as Lois. And I’m not the dark and scary Batman. My reputation isn’t nearly as difficult to uphold.”

 Bruce glared, but decided this wasn’t worth fighting with a killer headache. “I’ll let that one go if you get popcorn.”

 “Deal.” Clark grinned and leapt off his chair. “And I also promise not to tell Lois how much she’s corrupted you. Can’t have that.”

 Bruce, frankly, was just glad that everything was back to the way it should be.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I think I'm addicted to humiliating/torturing Bruce ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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